100 books every journalist must read

The Corpse Had a Familiar Face, Edna Buchanan

Edna Buchanan won a Pulitzer Prize for covering crime. It may have helped that she covered crime in Miami during the “Miami Vice” years, but it helped more that she’s a determined reporter and an entertaining writer. “The Corpse” is a memoir of murder and mayhem. But Buchanan isn’t just in it for the gore; she wants to know the why. She wants to know about the people. Those are the qualities that separate great crime reporters from the ones who churn out stories based on police reports and a chat with whoever answers the phone at headquarters. We’re in an age when, for local papers, crime stories are gold because they generate lots of online clicks. Too often, papers settle for the cheapest way to get those — short posts, thin on details, never updated. Read “The Corpse” to see how it’s supposed to be done.

Other voice:Gary S. Franklin, Los Angeles Times. “Buchanan’s account of death in the Miami area covers almost all the possibilities, and she has apparently covered them all: ranging from unidentified (to this day) bodies floating in a canal; to a hungry drunk at a fast-food chicken outlet, who punched the counter-girl and was shot dead by a security guard; to cab driver murders; to death during the 1972 Eastern Airlines L-1011 crash in the Everglades; to a variety of sex crimes; to the Miami racial riots. Buchanan has seen it all.”

Police reporters deal with lives, reputations and careers. So you keep on — ask one more question, knock on one more door, make one last phone call, and then another. It could be the one that counts.

Covering the ’60s: George Lois, the Esquire Era, George Lois

The Esquire magazine covers of the 1960s were large, bold images — none of this cluttering the cover with multiple cover lines. George Lois preferred to punch the reader in the face with one powerful story. Here’s Muhammad Ali, pierced by arrows; Andy Warhold drowning in an opened can of Campbell’s tomato soup; the stark white-on-black type “Oh my God — we hit a little girl.” The lessons here aren’t just for magazine types. When my old paper, The Plain Dealer, got national attention with a stark front page on the departure of LeBron James, I had one thought: That’s a George Lois page.

Other voice:Charles McGrath, New York Times. “Many of Mr. Lois’s covers were controversial, not so say irreverent or deliberately provocative. The Liston cover [the brutal boxer Sonny Liston as Santa Claus] cost the magazine $750,000 in dropped advertising. But they were immensely successful at drawing attention, on the newsstand especially.”

The words are those of an American soldier in Vietnam, as reported by John Sack in a lengthy article about an infantry company, from basic training through combat. This sentence leaped out at me from Sack’s description of a search-and-destroy mission. … This cover appeared early in the war, more than two years before the world heard of My Lai … The cover screamed to the world that something was wrong, terribly wrong.

I knew I wanted a book about data-driven reporting on this list, but all my knowledge of the field is based on hands-on experience. So I started searching. My search began and ended with this book. It’s an international collaboration with advice from top reporters — and it’s free (online). A group of coders from the Chicago Tribune explain how they work in the newsroom to research, add data-driven material to online stories, and build databases for long-term use. Someone from the German site OpenDataCity talks about collaborating with traditional media. Case studies explore data use in covering riots, hospital bills, elections and more.

Other voice: Julian Champkin, Scientific American blogs. “At this stage of the game the handbook is no more than an outline of what can be possible, But that in itself is immensely valuable. And it does have practical guidelines for those who want to join the field.”

Data driven projects are cheaper than traditional marketing campaigns. Online news outlets will often invest in things like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). A executed data project will normally generate a lot of clicks and buzz, and may go viral. Publishers will typically pay less for this then trying to generate the same attention by clicks and links through SEM.

Dispatches, Michael Herr

Of the many books about the Vietnam war, only one shows up on list after list of the best of journalism. Herr speaks the soldier’s language and sees the war through their eyes. Ernie Pyle, in wars gone by, had carefully collected the names of the soldiers he met and worked each into his dispatches so the folks back home would know their sons were alive and well. Herr works their thoughts and fears into “Dispatches” instead. America’s wars since Vietnam have become increasingly stage-managed, from a journalist’s point of view. There are far more limitations on where reporters can go. And the nature of the fighting forces has changed — no more draftees. Even the nature of war has changed — fewer firefights, more killings by mechanical proxies such as drones and roadside bombs. How much, though, has changed for the men and women in the thick of it like the ones Herr talked to?

Other voice:Wendy Smith, The American Scholar. “Somehow, a young journalist whose previous experience consisted mostly of travel pieces and film criticism managed to transform himself into a wild new kind of war correspondent capable of comprehending a disturbing new kind of war.”

Not that you didn’t hear some overripe bullshit about it: Hearts and Minds, Peoples of the Republic, tumbling dominoes, maintaining the equilibrium of the Dingdong by containing the ever encroaching Doodah; you could also hear the other, some young soldier speaking in all bloody innocence, saying ‘All that’s just a load, man. We’re here to kill gooks. Period.’ Which wasn’t at all true of me. I was there to watch.

Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited, Steve Krug

As I explained in the introduction to this list, I fret that books about how to use technology or software will become outdated in just the time it takes me to type their descriptions. However, Steve Krug’s book on web usability comes highly recommended, and it’s been updated in 2014, including a chapter on mobile usability. What’s usability? It’s whether the people who look at your stuff online can figure out how to look at it — where to click or hover to do what. Even if you’ll work in a straitjacketed CMS (content management system) that has serious usability flaws, you may be able to find ways to work around them. “Don’t Make Me Think” will, at the least, make you want to look for them.

Other voice:Kerry Butters, SitePoint. “This book is ideal for beginners because it doesn’t dive into anything overly confusing but is written in clear, simple language that is also peppered with humor. It’s highly accessible thanks to the conversational tone that the author takes and there’s absolutely nothing intimidating about it.”

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been telling people that [‘Don’t make me think!’] is my first law of usability. … It means that as far as is humanly possible, when I look at a Web page it should be self-evident. Obvious. Self-explanatory.

Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control …, Fred Friendly

Fred Friendly gets two entries on this list (see “The Good Guys, the Bad Guys and the First Amendment”), and I could have kept going, too. He’s that good a writer and that smart an observer. “Due to Circumstances” is both his account of his 16 years at CBS in partnership with Edward R. Murrow and an indictment of the network and TV journalism in general. Yes, though Friendly and Murrow are responsible for much of the iconic reporting of TV’s early days — “See It Now’s” takedown of Sen. Joe McCarthy, the “Harvest of Shame” documentary on migrant workers — they were constantly at war with their corporate bosses. So “Due to Circumstances” not only serves as a history of broadcast news, it also speaks to every journalist who has had to battle number-crunchers, whether those folks are concerned about dollars or clicks.

Other voice:Roscoe L. Barrow, University of Pennsylvania Law Review. “Friendly, in the tradition of Murrow’s journalism, appreciated that television is today the most persistent force in shaping the minds of the people and may determine ultimately what kind of people we are. Sensitive to his responsibility as a journalist to fulfill the social need for information on the great issues of our time, and lacking the desired support of his superiors at CBS, Friendly resigned as a matter of conscience. No doubt he hoped that, through his example, network managers might be prompted to give a greater role in making news judgments to broadcasting’s Fourth Estate.”

Regardless of the accuracy or distortion of Nielsen’s projections, they are fed into that vending-machine bureaucracy and are the final arbiter. There are exceptions, but in general the staple diet of television is cued to the taste of those twelve hundred homes. The fact that the popularity of programs is based on a sliding scale makes this barometer no less pernicious.

The Elements of Journalism, Bill Kovach & Tom Rosenstiel

No one gets to declare themselves the indisputable arbiters of proper journalism, but Kovach and Rosenstiel have the credentials to stake a claim. This book was a flag stuck into the ground, defending the values of the best traditional newsrooms. There’s much that I find good here … but also arguments that continue to fade as time goes by. In particular, the line between journalists and non-journalists is neither as narrow nor as clearly defined as Kovach and Rosenstiel want to think. Also, they want to stake out a distinction between journalism as they wish it to be practiced, and everything else. In doing so, they fence out a lot of what journalists have been doing for more than a century. My objections aside, “The Elements of Journalism” had a lot of journalism’s grey eminences nodding in agreement when it came out, so it should be read to understand where the old guard are coming from — a place of thoughtful and sincere beliefs.

Other voice:Stryker McGuire, The Guardian. “The book is best when it analyses what went wrong with all but the best American journalism, and why. Where the book goes off the rails – at least as a document that might appeal to British readers – is when it becomes too American for its own good, succumbing to self-importance and worthiness.”

The impartial voice employed by many news organizations, that familiar, supposedly neutral style of newswriting, is not a fundamental principle of journalism. Rather, it is an often helpful device news organizations use to highlight that they are trying to produce something obtained by objective methods. … This neutral voice, without a discipline of verification, creates a veneer covering something hollow. Journalists who select sources to express what is really their own point of view, and then use the neutral voice to make it seem objective, are engaged in a form of deception.

(Memoirs of) Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Charles Mackay

I am willing to stray outside journalism for this choice because every reporter and editor should learn well that the majority is not always right. First published in 1852, Charles Mackay’s book remains available because it remains relevant. Mackay recounts various episodes in which masses of people engaged in behaviour that is, seen with a cold eye, irrational. Don’t think that happens now? “New Age” charlatans like Deepak Chopra are fawned over; useless “complementary medicine” nostrums are swallowed whole. Flashes in the pan such as collectible Beanie Babies show up in news stories without warnings about how quickly they’re likely to fall out of favor. At least journalists no longer seem to swallow the silliness of fortune-tellers and future-tellers, or at least we’ve moved past believing in them when they do so under the guise of psychic ability (proclaim yourself a trendspotter or futurist, though, and you can predict away without worrying that anyone will hold you to account for past mistakes). Read this book to hone your skepticism, if not cynicism. Combine this with debunking bloggers such as Steven Novella to inoculate yourself against nonsense.

At last, however, the more prudent began to see that this [tulip bulb investment] folly could not last for ever. Rich people no longer bought the flowers to keep them intheir gardens, but to sell them again at center per cent profit. It was seen that somebody must lose fearfully in the end. As this conviction spread, prices fell, and never rose again.

Fame and Obscurity, Gay Talese

I won’t quibble if you choose another Gay Talese collection, but this early one shows how he came on the scene. Talese is another of the literary journalists, using the techniques of fiction in service of the facts. These writers are so prominent on this list because what they did has lessons far beyond the books and magazine-length articles they produced. Being a journalist in a multimedia world means, as I’ve said on many occasions, moving up to the big box of 64 crayons with which to tell stories. To make the best use of our new tools, we have to move beyond the conventions of old journalism — whether print or broadcast — and think in new ways. The literary journalists showed the way. Also, they’re each a hell of a read.

Other voice: Maria Henson, Nieman Storyboard. “Talese’s curiosity fuels his research in such an expansive way that we learn the paradoxical tale of Sinatra the arrogant, tempestuous celebrity and Sinatra the lonesome, sentimental man, a part of whom, Talese writes, ‘no matter where he is, is never there.’ It required prodigious reporting to write with such confidence a crystalline description that serves as the essence of this piece.”

The two blondes, who seemed to be in their middle thirties, were preened and polished, their matured bodies softly molded within tight dark suits. They sat, legs crossed, perched on the high bar stools. They listened to the music. Then one of them pulled out a Kent and Sinatra quickly placed his gold lighter under it and she held his hand, looked at his fingers: they were nubby and raw, and the pinkies protruded, being so stiff from arthritis that he could barely bend them. He was, as usual, immaculately dressed. He wore an oxford-grey suit with a vest, a suit conservatively cut on the outside but trimmed with flamboyant silk within; his shoes, British, seemed to be shined even on the bottom of the soles. He also wore, as everybody seemed to know, a remarkably convincing black hairpiece, one of sixty that he owns, most of them under the care of an inconspicuous little grey-haired lady who, holding his hair in a tiny satchel, follows him around whenever he performs. She earns $400 a week. The most distinguishing thing about Sinatra’s face are his eyes, clear blue and alert, eyes that within seconds can go cold with anger, or glow with affection, or, as now, reflect a vague detachment that keeps his friends silent and distant.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson created a new category, “gonzo journalism.” He had a voice that could not be duplicated (however wretchedly many tried). It’s not the kind of voice you’d want to see delivering you the news of the day; his facts are somewhat malleable and everything takes a lurid yellow tone when seen through his jaundiced eye. That’s the fun of it, though. I’d recommend several of his books, including “Hell’s Angels” and “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail: 1972.” I selected the Vegas book for this list simply because it has one of the best lead sentences in journalism history, highlighted below.

Other voice:Crawford Woods, New York Times. “it is an apposite gloss on the more history-laden rock lyrics (‘to live outside the law you must be honest’) and– Don Quixote in a Chevy–a trendy English teacher’s dream, a text for the type who teaches Emily Dickinson and Paul Simon from the same mimeograph sheet. It is, as well, a custom-crafted study of paranoia, a spew from the 1960’s and–in all its hysteria, insolence, insult, and rot–a desperate and important book, a wired nightmare, the funniest piece of American prose since ‘Naked Lunch.’ ”

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

About Author

John Kroll

John Kroll is a digital journalist and educator (currently teaching at Kent State University) with experience in editing, coaching, content creation and management. He holds a master's degree in education and a bachelor's in journalism. In various roles at The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, including Online Editor, he developed a training program that introduced a newsroom of about 200 reporters, photographers, artists and others to SEO, iterative journalism, multimedia and more. Previously, as an editor, he led award-winning projects including 18-month coverage of the bankruptcy of LTV Steel and an examination of America's retirement funding crisis. Contact him at john [at] johnkrolldigital [dot] com.

Comments

I’d add “The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune,” by Richard Kluger. The Trib was the great newspaper of the mid-’60s, with an oversized impact on our notions of quality — and effective — journalism. Too bad the numbers didn’t add up.

Some good books here, but some glaring omissions that I didn’t immediately find: Hiroshima by John Hersey, The Face of War by Martha Gellhorn, A Bright, Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan. Something from Richard Harding Davis and Stephen Crane.

Good choices, Chris. I decided I covered Harding Davis with The First Casualty, and I think I remember him being in the Treasury of Great Reporting. I was a bit concerned about over-representing war reporting.

“Precision Journalism”, by Phil Meyer. This 1972 book launched the idea that reporters should use social science methods like polling and statistical analysis, and led to the widespread adoption today of data journalism in newsrooms around the world.

Thanks for the suggestion, Steve. I read that back in journalism school when I considered applying my computer science minor to a newsroom job. I went with the Data Journalism Handbook for the list, but you’re right, Meyer’s book launched the era of data journalism.

Of your 100, only 18 are written or edited or about women. This seems unbalanced to me, given the preponderance of women in this industry, Nellie Bly onward. How about Marguerite Higgins?
Or the extraordinarily brave war reporter Marie Colvin or Janine Giovanni?

I did the same count you did, Caitlin. It’s a concern. Some of the collections that are edited by men do, however, include women as contributors, so it’s not as lopsided as the count suggests. I considered adding a collection devoted solely to female journalists — the one already on my shelves is “Brilliant Bylines” by Barbara Belford, which includes short biographies. I wondered, though, if that might seem tokenism.

I’d certainly rethink In Cold Blood, given later information on how Capote cooked some of it. Ditto All the President’s Men, which played a little loose with narrative fact as a way to tee up the movie deal. And some of those j-school textbooks are by people who never wrote more than a memo or a term paper in their lives? No way do they belong. And lots of those books on this list are woefully out of date.

It Happened One Night, the Titanic book, deserves a mention. It was very early quality non-fiction narrative. And doesn’t anyone even remember Psmith: Journalist by Wodehouse, a classic in the genre?

James, I’m not sure who you’re referring to regarding the textbook authors. I explain my decisions regarding In Cold Blood and all the President’s Men in the list: Knowing those books, it seems to me, is essential to understand their impact on the craft.

I would add:
“Smiling Through the Apocalypse: Esquire’s History of the Sixties” – collects much of Esquire’s landmark journalism from that decade by Gay Talese, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe and others.
“America: What Went Wrong?” by Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele – the only book I can think of that became an issue in a presidential campaign, in 1992, over its analysis of how the American middle class was losing out. (The same authors revisited that theme a couple of years ago in “The Betrayal of the American Dream.”)
“The Selling of the President 1968” by Joe McGinniss – the first book to look behind how candidates are packaged and marketed, as they’ve been ever since.
“What Liberal Media?” by Eric Alterman – the first book that really pushed back against the conservative meme that “the media are all liberals.”
Anything by Roger Angell, whose New Yorker reporting on baseball is unparalleled.

Michael, thanks for commenting. Esquire writers are already well represented on the list — not counting Mailer, who’s not one of my favorites. I admire Bartlett and Steele, but I couldn’t find a place for them on the list; worth thinking about again.

I’d have to add William Shirer’s Berlin Diary. He was in the belly of the beast, reporting on Hitler’s rise to power — he even accompanied the Wehrmacht on their drive into France — and then he joined Murrow in the early days of radio news. And his Rise and Fall of the Third Reich showed that some journalists do recognize the need to go back and do a much deeper version of their initial reporting.

Give Berlin Diary a try. It’s “pre-history” in that while we know what all of this means and how it will turn out, Shirer doesn’t, so you get a great sense of how difficult it was for journalists on the scene and everyone else to understand where Hitler was headed.
What’s missing from Berlin Diary are the actual stories Shirer wrote. He’s there at all of the major Nazi rallies, at every step in Hitler’s rise to power, he repeatedly describes the look on Hitler’s face as he is standing a few yards away, but he has to deal with Goebbels and the censors, so while we read what he is thinking, we don’t know what he is telling his readers. He’s aware that Jews are in trouble and trying to get out of Europe, but you don’t know if he ever wrote about, e.g. He eventually leaves, a year before Pearl Harbor, in part because he realizes he can’t tell his readers what is happening (and in part because he fears the Germans are about to arrest him as a spy).

Thanks for a heroic achievement in concocting this list. I haven’t had the time to truly digest, analyze, contemplate specific trade-offs, etc., but off the top here are some things I would have considered.

Edmund Wilson, “The American Earthquake.” Remarkable reporting and writing about the 1920s and 30s Saturation reporting and New Journalism decades before they came into fashion.

“Speaking of Journalism,” ed. William Zinsser. Corby Kummer’s relatively brief piece “Editors and Writers” is one of the single best things I’ve ever read on the craft of editing, a much tougher topic to talk about than how to write well.

Norman Mailer, “Miami and the Siege of Chicago.” You don’t like Mailer? Tough. Too influential and important to ignore. This is his best non-fiction.

“The Reporter as Artist: A Look at the New Journalism Controversy,” ed. Ronald Weber. Fantastic overview, valuable not only for examples of personal journalism but for discussions, critiques, interviews and dissents.

John Reed, “10 Days that Shook the World.” Classic all the way around.

Seymour Krim, “Missing a Beat.,” ed. Mark Cohen. A highly influential and original voice growing out of the beat generation who was already forgotten by his death in 1989. This is a recent anthology but I’d encourage folks to scour used book stores for Krim’s own collections like “Views of a Nearsighted Cannoneer,” “Shake it For the World, Smartass,” etc.

Ralph Ellison, “Shadow and Act.” OK – Ellison’s essays aren’t conventional reporting, but no book will teach you more about the American experience, culture and race and therefore no book is more important for those who need to understand American culture, which is to say journalists.

Roger Angell, “Game Time.” An A+ anthology by the best baseball writer ever. Period. Full Stop. (Coda: Tom Boswell of the Washington Post is equally great on baseball and golf and it’s worth looking for his collections “How Life Imitates the World Series,” “Strokes of Genius” and “Why Time Begins on Opening Day.”

The “old editor” was right when he recommended the Bible and Shakespeare. Whether you’re an atheist or devout believer, every journalist should be up to speed on the literary and cultural allusions that have come into the language from the Bible: 40 days and 40 nights, manna from heaven, etc. Same goes for Shakespeare. And I would add Greek and Roman mythology. Too many journalists seem clueless at basic references.
In terms of books, I’ve recommended to many young (and not so young) journalists William Manchester’s “The Glory and the Dream,” a political AND cultural history of the United States covering the 1920s to early ’70s. I don’t know about anybody else’s high school education, but too often history classes ran out of time as they approached the World Wars and shortchanged all but the most basic stuff. The result: a relative “black hole” of knowledge on anything from that period on until the person was old enough to follow “current events.”

Don, I agree that journalists should have a basic cultural awareness. I don’t agree that such requires reading the Bible and Shakespeare. Knowing chapter and verse for manna from heaven won’t improve anyone’s writing or reporting. But I might even go along with the suggestion — if older journalists would agree that they must keep up to date with youth culture as well. For every young reporter who doesn’t know enough about post-War history, I can match you with older journalists who are still peppering their copy with allusions drawn from movies, songs, TV shows and books that are unknown to readers under 35.

An excellent suggestion, John. As an older journalist (23 years in the biz), I still try to read at least two books on the bestsellers list, see most of the major blockbuster films in the theater and listen to the songs that go viral. As for TV, I can’t stomach the reality shows, but the rest I watch on Netflix/Hulu/Amazon/YouTube/iTunes. Now I just need to find a way to become immortal, so I can find the time do even more.

Before you say, oh, Jesus, who let Hunter S. Thompson in the room, please consider Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist / Gonzo Letters Volume II 1968-1976. These are the personal correspondences of a journalist at the height of his craft, committed to his craft at all costs, battling for truth and expenses.

Love your list. I am not a journalist, only a reader who is fascinated by reporting, a gift from my parents who let me listen to Morrow when I was but a boy and got me hooked on new for life. Thanks for including Mencken, introduced to me by my uncle, a journalist, whose collection of Mencken I have in addition to my own copies. And thanks for Liebling, whose Earl of Louisiana was my young introduction to my own home state and city, and whose writing showed me what great expository, lively prose was all about.

I’d never heard of McCord’s book before, Patrick. Which is a surprise, because my mom grew up in Peshtigo, north of Green Bay, and I spent a lot of summers up there so I’m somewhat familiar with the saga of the Green Bay papers. I’ll give it a look. Thanks!

Thanks for the comment, Sam. I’m a print guy, myself, and had to fight that bias in assembling the list. Also had some concern about tilting the broadcast focus too much toward CBS, same reason I bypassed Cronkite’s autobiography. But worth a second thought.

The SND annual is the museum of modern journalistic decay. Your description of the “evolution” of design is laughable. What actually happened: A bunch of people who couldn’t hack it as editors came up with a way to redefine the work and to make editing of lower priority.

The result: A 40-year con game in which papers continue to claim they “attract” readers with their design, even though all circulation and sales numbers indicate otherwise. Some might call this “lying.”

The credibility of your list dropped to zero with that inclusion. I’m sure many pseudojournalists and others trying to cling to a level of self-importance will ruminate deeply about this list, but I’ve seen what I need to see.

In addition:

“Of your 100, only 18 are written or edited or about women. This seems unbalanced to me …”

Quotas as a guideline for quality — mmmkay. Someone must not have read much Ray Bradbury.

The call for quotas — another example of the total failings of modern journalism.

Hi, Bob! I feel honored to get my very own Robert Knilands trolling comment. This blog has made the big time, apparently. (For those of you who don’t know, Mr. Knilands is a frequent sniper on Internet forums about journalism, particularly about design.)

That’s a pretty weak counterargument. I had expected better, but I guess anyone who includes an SND annual in a list of must-reads has some issues.

Back to the oh-so-horrible-omissions, aka any book a self-important journalist DEMANDS inclusion for: I actually fished Roger Angell’s “Late Innings” out of the pile just a couple of weeks ago. There was time only to flip through a few random pages, but I remember it being an above-average read years ago. The big disappointment today was seeing the “circle the wagons” mentality that plagues far too much of what passes for sportswriting today. Nevertheless, I plan to get the book out again in the future, as I fully expect it will be several levels above the sewage that flows through today’s “sports” sections, many of which have sold out to weak social commentary and lame comedy routines.

Also, the page designers who are blissfully ignorant about yellow journalism and what it entailed should read:

Homicide by David Simon is vital. So is The Word by Rene Capon–it is the single best book for a fledgling journalist–or any writer–to read. And Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is overrated from a journalistic perspective. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail is much better. McGovern’s campaign manager called it the least factual and most accurate depiction of the campaign for good reason.

I’ve heard a lot of support for Homicide. I’d never heard of Capon’s book. Regarding Fear and Loathing — I take your point, and comparing Boys on the Bus with Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail would be interesting. Thanks for your suggestions, Bruce.

All the books that have a “Find in my store” link underneath are available as new copies (or Kindle copies) from Amazon. For other books, the “Find on Biblio.com” or “Find on AbeBooks” links to send you to search results on those used-book sites. Using any of those links will earn me a small commission on books you purchase, helping cover the costs of assembling this list.

Indispensible Enemies by Walter Karp
Karp was Lewis Laphams right hand guy at Harpers.
Bill Moyers said he was one of the six greats whom
Molly Ivins would have joined by now.
Karp divides the world of politics into hacks and reformers
and shows the hacks of both parties colluding to keep
all reformers out of power. Karp also shows us the role
of dummy candidates and thrown elections.
Nothing in American politics makes sense before Karp
Everything in American politics makes sense
after you’ve read Karp.

Also Gothic Politics in the Deep South by Robert Sherrill.
Sherrill was an emeritus editor at the Nation and Ivins mentor
at Texas Monthly.

Wonderful list. Thank you for sharing the wealth. I’m not a journalist (I used to teach English Lit and currently run workshops on Innovation) but I’m fanatical about journalism. I particularly loved William E. Blundell’s “The Art and Craft of Feature Writing: Based on The Wall Street Journal Guide”. It’s a wee bit stodgy but it nails the vital importance of a clear underlying structure.